Families that Spartan together stay Spartan Strong together!

Fitness With Five Kids

I sat down to write the first blog post about our workout routines and how we’ve come to stay active as a family, but it occurred to me I may want to clarify something first. Before you go thinking that we are some perfect, high performance, nail-everything-on-the-first-try family, let me tell you… we aren’t. We are active, to be sure, but each one of the seven of us have our ups and downs. I may make it look like working out with 5 kids is a breeze. After all, doesn’t everyone just look so pumped up?

Truthfully, it is much easier said than done. Pictures are just a snapshot in time, captured at just the right moment to make everything look magical. I could blog about how we do yoga and meditation in the morning and how wonderful it is for us physically and spiritually. You would likely sit there and think “that’s unreal! How do they do it? I can’t even get my kid to sit still for dinner!” And well, you would be right to think that. Lets be honest, kids are little powerhouses and their energy, no matter your efforts, will occasionally, if not often, thwart you. So in reality morning yoga starts something like this:

I call out to the kids explaining that it is time for Sun Salutations. A crowd gathers. The two oldest boys are wrestling and smacking each other while the twins begin climbing on, well, anything. I ask if we are all here, to which they all reply yes, but when I turn around… now I am not perfect at math, but I am pretty sure we are one short.

“Where’s Asher?” I say.

“Upstairs,” says one casually as though Asher’s absence is a foregone conclusion and not noteworthy. Note to self: “all of you” is a relative term.

No big deal, just one short, it could be worse and so I say, “can you please go get him so we can all start?”

“Sure!” one of the teens says and takes off around the corner. Meanwhile, the twins, who are eight and can sit still for exactly .002 seconds are already heading off out back to play. Being patient (yeah right) I ask them if they want to do their yoga outside and I will keep the door open between us. They are thrilled.

Asher and Alex soon come around the corner. Now I have all five kids and I am ready to start! Well, almost five kids. The twins are now gone. The twins who had just been right outside the door are now nowhere in sight. Of course, right? How silly was I to expect that if I allowed them outside they would patiently wait near the door for us to start?

To my shock and their credit, they had moved their yoga mats across the patio and were already starting! I was proud of them. They could have been climbing trees or swinging sticks at each other and yet there they were doing yoga! As marvelous as that sounds, that is when everything started to really break down.

“Alright you two, bring your mats over here, it’s time to get started.”

I tell them I am so proud of them and they are doing such a good job but now it is time to start as a family.

“What?” Amber wails in dismay, “I thought you said we could do our own yoga!” For the record, I didn’t say that, and we’ve had this routine for almost a year now, so I figure they should know what to expect. Yet there they remained, complaining and wailing and making what to them must be serious threats. “Fine! Then I won’t do yoga at all!” Meanwhile the teen boys are trying to be helpful by yelling at the twins, sighing heavily and remarking to each other about how annoyed they are. I am yelling at the boys to stop yelling at the twins, so yeah, it is a pretty gruesome sight.

That, my friends, is the typical start of any group activity. I am sure you can relate. We eventually got all the emotions worked out, every kid into a place where they were not bumping into or kicking one another, and we began a really successful yoga flow. By successful I mean, we had wiggles, we had kids fall out of poses, we had a few sighs from a teen or two as I called out a pose that he didn’t care for. What made it successful is that, well, we all survived! YAAAS!

So there you have it. If you are looking for a blog written by an expert who has just nailed life and has all the answers, well, this is not that blog. We are somewhere in the middle of our journey. We’ve learned a lot, we’ve grown a lot, we’re relatively fit and pretty healthy eaters, but we still have a long way to go. Our goal is to just keep going, and to have fun getting there!

Too funny not to share! Yes, that is Michael kicking Kaleb in the middle of our flow and no, I didn’t even notice until I watched the video later. Note: no Kalebs were harmed during the filming for this blog.

Published by Laura Magee

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4 comments

Amazing! You are a powerhouse. You are doing so much more than exercising and teaching the kids that fitness is life long, you are strengthening the foundation of your family. I am looking forward to reading more!